Watch out for this one. Put in 3 claims to sheriff court RBS Visa, Mastercard and my own account. Within a few days i received a cheque for the Visa. Great i thought. Then last Friday had a letter regarding the other 2 saying they were prepared to settle out of court. I noted that there was a small difference in the amount they were going to pay and what i was claiming, so i pointed this out. This is the response i got :-

##The figure offered to you in my letter of 22 November 2006 discounts the interest that you seek of £11.23. Interest is generally available from the date of service of the summons on the defender. A sufficient legal basis has to be averred for any additional sums of interest you seek. The Bank has no notice of this. In these circumstances I am prepared to increase the offer by the interest on the charges from the date of service on the Bank (24 Oct 06). This gives a sum of £1.18. Continuing the spirit of goodwill I will round this figure up to £222.

I should be grateful if you would now confirm acceptance of this amended offer on the same terms as contained in my letter of 22 November 2006. Thereafter I will arrange for the payment to be made##

As i wanted to get this sorted out quickly, and because the difference was minimal i agreed. This is what i got back:-

##I have now arranged for your respective bank and credit card accounts to be credited with the sums of £430 and £222 respectively. As these were the accounts from which the funds were taken, it is to these accounts that any credit must be applied. I am afraid it is not possible to pay these settlement monies by cheque.

I trust this is self-explanatory##

I AM ABSOLUTELY FUMING .......... never did they in any correspondence say this and i feel that i have been lied to and taken for a fool. So i have replied with this:-

As per my original letters and the court summons, i require payment via cheque and will NOT accept any other means of payment. I no longer use either my Royal Bank of Scotland Bank Account or Credit Card Accounts, so there is no point in refunding the money into them. This was VERY CLEARLY stated on all my correspondence and the Court Summons. If you are not prepared to issue a cheque for the charges i will take the matter futher and cancel my letter to the court and advise them that i still wish to go ahead with the Summons. I still have until 30th November and am quite happy and prepared to go through with my claim in court. I received a cheque from RBS re charges on my Visa Account within a few days of filing my claim, so your statement that you cannot issue cheques is untrue and misleading. Never in any of your correspondence have you stated that you would be paying in any other way but via a cheque and this means that you have been misleading in all your correspondence. If you had pointed all this out at the start, i would not have agreed to settle out of court or been as quick to cancel the Summons. The Court Summons VERY CLEARLY stated i wished to be paid by cheque and i have already agreed to take less money than i actually claimed for and that you owe me, in order to settle this quickly and quietly, and i am vey angry and upset that you have been so dishonest. I'm sure the thousands of people on the Consumer Action Group web site and my local newspaper would be interested in your tactics as well. I'm still under no obligation to keep quiet. I am not prepared to waste anymore of my time on this, so if you are not in agreement then i will go back to the court tomorrow afternoon and ask for a continuence.

Please take heed from this and if you agree to settle out of court watch out for RBS's tactics.

Pauline xx

Presumably, though, as you are not using these accounts, you will now be in credit and so can simply withdraw the money?

Thats the problem, these accounts are now closed and no longer used.

If they are closed, how could they put money in them?

They havent put it in yet. They have said they are going to. Barclaycard tried to do the same and i had to fight to get a cheque from them.

They will not be able to credit your accounts if they have been closed though?

what if an account has defaulted and the card/bank is still owed money by me? so in basic terms lets say i am succesful in claiming 1000 pounds but i owe them 1500 pounds and the account is only still "open" for repayment purposes? are the banks within their rights to use the 1000 pounds to decrease the debt i owe them? or must they send me a cheque and then i continue with the prearranged payment plan? does anyone know the answer to this?

edit

Espana07,

If you raise an action against the bank in respect of charges applied to your account and you still owe money on that account, the Bank could seek to raise a counterclaim against you for full repayment of the money.

so am i best just leaving it then and doing nothing with regard to the credit cards whom i still owe money to and am now in a repayment-only, cards-cancelled, situation with at the moment?